Little things mean a lot

In Windows, a dialog box pops up. It's annoying, we reflexively click just to make it go away, and then ask ourselves, "wait...what did I just do?" In Windows, the "proceed/yes" button is on the left and the "cancel/no" button is to the right. When we read from left to right, the "proceed/yes" button is the first button we see, and we tend to click it without thinking. Every once in a while, we're realize too late that we've done something we can't undo, much to our chagrin.

Thoughtlessly, intuitively, Ubuntu just works

I'm going to be discussing my experience in exploring Ubuntu over the next little while, as I learn new things.

Here's what made me smile just this morning.

For work, I went to check the earnings release for a company we're looking at, which they've posted on their website in pdf. So I click on the link, the pdf downloads, I click on the downloaded link, and the Q3'10 results pop open in Evince Document Viewer. And that's when it hit me - I didn't even think about going to find a viewer, didn't have to install a viewer. Having installed Ubuntu, the OS included this open source software as part of a minimum package the developers decided the average user should have.

I didn't have to think about it. It just works.

I'm running free in Ubuntu

While I am an Iron Maiden fan, I was never keen on the single Running Free, and couldn't quite understand how it became somewhat of an anthem from their earlier material in spite of its relatively uninspired musicality from a band that was on its way to becoming the defining act in the story of the heavy metal genre, the final book end culminating the legacy of their countrymen, Black Sabbath, the band that ushered forth the new era in music. However, the chorus just keeps looping in my mind as I attempt to put into words how I feel during this first exploration into using a Linux operating system.

Rogers falls short

The headline today: Weak subscriber growth hits Rogers.

The joke is that these results "sailed below analysts' expectations." It's funny, because the current results are merely the answers to questions we here at Non-techie Talk were asking six months ago.

Google Wave subsides

Official Google Blog: Update on Google Wave

Previously, I mentioned that I got Google Wave, from a theoretic point of view. Now that Google has squashed it, and having read some of the reactions to it, I join those who suggest this is no failure at all.